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Your (kids') schools are run by idiots, facsists, and maybe pedophiles.

Posts

Why is the idea unsubstantiated? Did the school not substantiate it themselves?

They said "for activities blahblah" not "because it was stolen". And never "we told people this was a system in place" or "we consulted anyone in any manner about allowing this".

From the district's statement:

This feature has only been used for the limited purpose of locating a lost, stolen or missing laptop. The District has not used the tracking feature or web cam for any other purpose or in any other manner whatsoever.

This feature has only been used for the limited purpose of locating a lost, stolen or missing laptop. The District has not used the tracking feature or web cam for any other purpose or in any other manner whatsoever.

So you can choose to believe them or not, but that's what they said.

And yet they managed to find a picture of a student engaged in nameless inappropriate behaviour which, it certainly appears, didn't involve stealing any laptops. Perhaps they would like to contend that it was sent to them by fairies. Or perhaps they define a "missing" laptop as one which is in the hands of a student who might be getting up to something juicy.

Any situation in which a camera in a teenager's bedroom can be remotely activated by adults is a bad situation.

Catullus 16 on February 2010

jothki: If you removed all of the protons from a unicorn, would it still be a unicorn?Evil Multifarious: it would be a dead unicorn.

This feature has only been used for the limited purpose of locating a lost, stolen or missing laptop. The District has not used the tracking feature or web cam for any other purpose or in any other manner whatsoever.

So you can choose to believe them or not, but that's what they said.

And yet they managed to find a picture of a student engaged in nameless inappropriate behaviour which, it certainly appears, didn't involve stealing any laptops. Perhaps they would like to contend that it was sent to them by fairies. Or perhaps they define a "missing" laptop as one which is in the hands of a student who might be getting up to something juicy.

Any situation in which a camera in a teenager's bedroom can be remotely activated by adults is a bad situation.

This feature has only been used for the limited purpose of locating a lost, stolen or missing laptop. The District has not used the tracking feature or web cam for any other purpose or in any other manner whatsoever.

So you can choose to believe them or not, but that's what they said.

And yet they managed to find a picture of a student engaged in nameless inappropriate behaviour which, it certainly appears, didn't involve stealing any laptops. Perhaps they would like to contend that it was sent to them by fairies. Or perhaps they define a "missing" laptop as one which is in the hands of a student who might be getting up to something juicy.

Any situation in which a camera in a teenager's bedroom can be remotely activated by adults is a bad situation.

What is this based on? Because according to the district, it did, and nobody else has provided any details.

What is this based on? Because according to the district, it did, and nobody else has provided any details.

If the kid had been stealing a laptop, he wouldn't have been disciplined for inappropriate behaviour. He would have been arrested. For theft.

If he had been disciplined instead, the first thing anybody would've said about the matter would have been "He stole a fucking laptop", not "We spied on him and caught him doing bad things. But nobody's going to tell you what bad things he was doing exactly. But we've never spied on anybody who didn't steal a laptop. You do the math."

Catullus 16 on February 2010

jothki: If you removed all of the protons from a unicorn, would it still be a unicorn?Evil Multifarious: it would be a dead unicorn.

What is this based on? Because according to the district, it did, and nobody else has provided any details.

If the kid had been stealing a laptop, he wouldn't have been disciplined for inappropriate behaviour. He would have been arrested. For theft.

If he had been disciplined instead, the first thing anybody would've said about the matter would have been "He stole a fucking laptop", not "We spied on him and caught him doing bad things. But nobody's going to tell you what bad things he was doing exactly. But we've never spied on anybody who didn't steal a laptop. You do the math."

Nope!

The lawsuit says only that the image in question was "a photograph from the webcam embedded in minor Plaintiff's personal laptop". It nowhere states that the image was taken by the security system.

As noted earlier in the thread, it's a very obvious possibility that the student took this picture himself, and it was later seized by the school, which is probably their right as the owners of the laptop and in accordance with their agreement.

The suit only alleges that the district had the ability to use the security system for purposes other than the purported one, never that they actually did.

Actually one of the post in Boing-Boing net says that the pic was taken by the webcam on the laptop, while at home, with his own laptop.

I saw that, but there wasn't any reference, so I'm filing it with the rest of this stuff under "guesses".

Although my gut does tell me that "high school student takes incriminating picture with webcam, is later caught" ranks higher in probability than "school district uses security feature to spy on children at home, opening themselves to massive liability".

And specualtion tha the pic was taken by the student is mentioned and discounted in the post.

They also say they have disabled the feature and will be going over their routines.

That's... not what that post says. Or if it does, I don't know why.

I assume you're talking about

(some had speculated that the school was only able to surveil students' hard drives, and that the images of a student engaged in "misconduct" in his home that a vice-principal confronted the student with had been taken by the student, intentionally, and stored on the laptop's hard-drive, from which it was retrieved by the school administration -- this now seems not to have been the case)

Which merely notes that the school immediately admitted that they did have the security software installed, and did have the capability to take pictures remotely. Nowhere in that post (or more importantly, in the letter it cites, which is its only source, and is by and large merely a reiteration of the district's immediate response which I referenced earlier) is there evidence that this specific picture was taken by the software.

Yeah, considering that the statement never included anything about "this laptop was reported stolen," my money right now is on security system as a huge red herring and that this kid took the picture himself and got busted because someone saw him showing it to people and reported him. However, regardless of whether or not that is the case, I wonder about the flickering problem, and if a pervy IT admin is nevertheless getting his jollies with the security software. That could be going on regardless of the facts of this case. And, now that I think about it, the hypothetical pervy admin would have to be a mssive idiot to then try to pass along something he saw as evidence. He ought to know it would be way more evidence against himself than it would be against whatever the kid was doing.

And specualtion tha the pic was taken by the student is mentioned and discounted in the post.

They also say they have disabled the feature and will be going over their routines.

That's... not what that post says. Or if it does, I don't know why.

I assume you're talking about

(some had speculated that the school was only able to surveil students' hard drives, and that the images of a student engaged in "misconduct" in his home that a vice-principal confronted the student with had been taken by the student, intentionally, and stored on the laptop's hard-drive, from which it was retrieved by the school administration -- this now seems not to have been the case)

Which merely notes that the school immediately admitted that they did have the security software installed, and did have the capability to take pictures remotely. Nowhere in that post (or more importantly, in the letter it cites, which is its only source, and is by and large merely a reiteration of the district's immediate response which I referenced earlier) is there evidence that this specific picture was taken by the software.

Note the bolded ("only"). Some had speculated that the school was only able to get pictures from the hard drive taken by the student. This now seems to not be the case. See how those two sentences don't necessarily imply what did happen, but merely what could have happened?

The quote above states that either scenario is now plausible...it does not imply which is in fact the case.

Yeah, considering that the statement never included anything about "this laptop was reported stolen," my money right now is on security system as a huge red herring and that this kid took the picture himself and got busted because someone saw him showing it to people and reported him. However, regardless of whether or not that is the case, I wonder about the flickering problem, and if a pervy IT admin is nevertheless getting his jollies with the security software. That could be going on regardless of the facts of this case. And, now that I think about it, the hypothetical pervy admin would have to be a mssive idiot to then try to pass along something he saw as evidence. He ought to know it would be way more evidence against himself than it would be against whatever the kid was doing.

This.

As I said before, I'd be very interested to know exactly what kind of recordkeeping prevents (or rather prevented) any IT staff that choose to from taking these pictures without the district's authorization. How do we know they weren't doing so? What safeguards were in place?

And specualtion tha the pic was taken by the student is mentioned and discounted in the post.

They also say they have disabled the feature and will be going over their routines.

That's... not what that post says. Or if it does, I don't know why.

I assume you're talking about

(some had speculated that the school was only able to surveil students' hard drives, and that the images of a student engaged in "misconduct" in his home that a vice-principal confronted the student with had been taken by the student, intentionally, and stored on the laptop's hard-drive, from which it was retrieved by the school administration -- this now seems not to have been the case)

Which merely notes that the school immediately admitted that they did have the security software installed, and did have the capability to take pictures remotely. Nowhere in that post (or more importantly, in the letter it cites, which is its only source, and is by and large merely a reiteration of the district's immediate response which I referenced earlier) is there evidence that this specific picture was taken by the software.

And specualtion tha the pic was taken by the student is mentioned and discounted in the post.

They also say they have disabled the feature and will be going over their routines.

That's... not what that post says. Or if it does, I don't know why.

I assume you're talking about

(some had speculated that the school was only able to surveil students' hard drives, and that the images of a student engaged in "misconduct" in his home that a vice-principal confronted the student with had been taken by the student, intentionally, and stored on the laptop's hard-drive, from which it was retrieved by the school administration -- this now seems not to have been the case)

Which merely notes that the school immediately admitted that they did have the security software installed, and did have the capability to take pictures remotely. Nowhere in that post (or more importantly, in the letter it cites, which is its only source, and is by and large merely a reiteration of the district's immediate response which I referenced earlier) is there evidence that this specific picture was taken by the software.

What about this part?

Right. It's ambiguous.

You can read it either way.

(some had speculated that the school was only able to surveil students' hard drives, and that the images of a student engaged in "misconduct" in his home that a vice-principal confronted the student with had been taken by the student, intentionally, and stored on the laptop's hard-drive, from which it was retrieved by the school administration -- this now seems not to have been the case)

Hard to tell which part the second bolded bit is referring to. Could be either, could be both.

Sloppy writing. And considering I have seen no other verification that the picture was taken remotely (feel free to come up with another source) I'm not taking this article as in any way authoritative...not only is it not sourced, but it's not even clear what the meaning is.

EDIT: The problem is that it's an "and" statement. So if A&B=C, and we know C', then that can mean A' or B'.

The information being referenced in this statement doesn't report anything about who took the photo. It only discounts the first part of the statement, the part about the school not being able to capture images remotely. That is what is now known to not be the case, because the school admitted that such software existed. The grammar may be ambiguous in that sentence, but the overall message is logically unambiguous. The school did in fact have a theft recovery system that could capture images. That in no way affects the possibility that the kid took the photo himself. In fact, if we are believing what the school says, then either the laptop was reported stolen or he did take the photo himself.

One of the students involved in the class-action lawsuit against the administrators who used school-provided laptops to spy on them, contacted Gizmodo with details about what was happening.

Frequently, the green lights next to our [Early 2008 MacBook] iSight webcams will turn on. The school district claims that this is just a glitch. We are all doubting this now.

Another student has confirmed this:

I questioned the IT guy about why it was happening he said that it was because people logged out when an application using the camera was on, he also stated that they could in fact go and look through your webcam it would just violate the fifth ammendment and that's why they didn't.

Today, their principal went on loudspeaker and said that all this was "not true."

Not sure what the bit about the 5th amendment was about, but apparently the cameras flicking on "randomly" has been something the students have been wondering about for a while.

edit: I'm guessing either the IT guy or the student misremembered and was thinking of the 4th amendment, i.e. no unreasonable search/seizure.

As far as I'm aware that's something relatively common to MacBooks—*since the light indicates that the camera is being used for any reason, applications or the OS polling the camera can cause it to flick on momentarily.

Now it's "relatively common" from half a dozen people on the entire internet? There are millions of Macbook owners out there who are just completely unfazed by the fact that their webcam indicator LED randomly turns on without any apparent reason? And, despite the fact that this is "relatively common", there's no explanation (from Apple or other sources) that makes sense other than malware which behaves similarly to this school's theft protection software?

The only other explanation even attempted is that it turns on when OSX polls USB devices; but according to USB Prober, the iSight camera polling rate is 250hz. If the LED were turning on every time the camera was polled by the OS, it would never be off.

Despite Wired's article being very accusatory and even misrepresenting what was in the filing, we are still at the same point. The filing just says 1) A boy was accused of wrongdoing because of an image taken by the webcam, 2) later it was verified that the school has the ability to take pictures remotely. It doesn't connect the two.

But is also focuses a lot on the issue of "the fact that you sent these things home with our kids and never mentioned anywhere that you had the ability to snap pictuers with them is fudd up!" which is true even if it was an innocent misunderstanding and they were never used other than in thefts.

And specualtion tha the pic was taken by the student is mentioned and discounted in the post.

They also say they have disabled the feature and will be going over their routines.

That's... not what that post says. Or if it does, I don't know why.

I assume you're talking about

(some had speculated that the school was only able to surveil students' hard drives, and that the images of a student engaged in "misconduct" in his home that a vice-principal confronted the student with had been taken by the student, intentionally, and stored on the laptop's hard-drive, from which it was retrieved by the school administration -- this now seems not to have been the case)

Which merely notes that the school immediately admitted that they did have the security software installed, and did have the capability to take pictures remotely. Nowhere in that post (or more importantly, in the letter it cites, which is its only source, and is by and large merely a reiteration of the district's immediate response which I referenced earlier) is there evidence that this specific picture was taken by the software.

What about this part?

Right. It's ambiguous.

You can read it either way.

(some had speculated that the school was only able to surveil students' hard drives, and that the images of a student engaged in "misconduct" in his home that a vice-principal confronted the student with had been taken by the student, intentionally, and stored on the laptop's hard-drive, from which it was retrieved by the school administration -- this now seems not to have been the case)

Hard to tell which part the second bolded bit is referring to. Could be either, could be both.

Sloppy writing. And considering I have seen no other verification that the picture was taken remotely (feel free to come up with another source) I'm not taking this article as in any way authoritative...not only is it not sourced, but it's not even clear what the meaning is.

EDIT: The problem is that it's an "and" statement. So if A&B=C, and we know C', then that can mean A' or B'.

How are you turning A and B = C into A or B = C? I think you are confused by the writing; the journalist is trying to say that they had at first believed the school was only able to get information off the students' hard drives. Then the "and" comes in that doesn't really add anything but is actually more of an aside. He is basically stating the same thing, saying that they believed the picture that the school obtained was saved onto the hard drive and that is how the school got a hold of it - because they believed that was the only way the school was able to surveil onto the laptops. Then at the end it says this now seems not to have been the case (meaning the school got the picture from some other form of surveillance), which is pretty clear cut to me.

Attorney Mark Haltzman: "They’re trying to allege that when Blake was holding two Mike & Ikes in his hand, which he apparently loves and eats religiously, that those were pills, and somehow he’s involved in selling drugs."

Attorney Mark Haltzman: "They’re trying to allege that when Blake was holding two Mike & Ikes in his hand, which he apparently loves and eats religiously, that those were pills, and somehow he’s involved in selling drugs."

Which is ludicrous, but it's the sort of ludicrousness we're regrettably used to from schools, and still fits into the scenario where the security software was not used for nefarious purposes.

According to the FBI link, the suit claims they turned on the Laptop while the kid was at home.

Another article siad the cameras were turned on once to find missing laptops, only to find out they were mistakingly placed in the wrong room. They did get pics of students and teachers without them knowing about it while doing so.